Unprecedented number of LGBTQ candidates on midterm ballots could mean a Rainbow Wave in November, one group says

Blue wave, red tide – there’s a lot of colors involved in this year’s midterm election and one group is pointing to the possibility of a “rainbow wave” in November.

National non-partisan political action committee Victory Fund, which formed in 1991, has identified more than 430 openly LGBTQ people who ran for office at every level of government in the primaries this season. Of those, at least 244 candidates are still in their races for the November midterms, the group says.

One openly LGBTQ candidate running for U.S. Congress is from Florida.

Lauren Baer lives in Palm Beach Gardens, Fl, and is running for a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives as a Democrat. Baer is an attorney and previously worked as a government official under the Obama Administration.

Victory Fund says LGBTQ involvement in this year’s election cycle is unprecedented and that all the candidates the group identified running for U.S. Congress are Democrats.

Currently, Sen. Tammy Baldwin from Wisconsin is the only openly LGBTQ person ever elected to the U.S. Senate, and six members of the U.S. House are openly LGBTQ, the group reports.

“A wave of enthusiasm among Democratic primary voters for openly LGBTQ candidates has unleashed a Rainbow Wave that can transform the U.S. Congress and our governors’ mansions come November,” Victory Fund president and CEO Annise Parker said in a statement. “It represents an evolution in American politics – with voters choosing out LGBTQ candidates as the solution to the divisiveness and dysfunction we see in Washington and in many of our state capitals.”

CD Davidson-Hiers is a 2017 summa cum laude graduate of Florida State University with a degree in Creative Writing and French. She is a member of Phi Beta Kappa and Golden Key honors societies, and has received multiple writing awards for fiction, nonfiction and poetry. Prior to joining the Florida Phoenix, CD worked at the Tallahassee Democrat and has bylines in Tallahassee Magazine. She is a native of Pensacola and currently lives in Tallahassee with her tabby cat, Faulkner.

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